Space Station Survives Scare

Nation & world

WASHINGTON — A soothing letter from President Clinton was all it took Thursday to keep a key Republican in Congress from withdrawing his support for NASA's planned space station.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., a longtime station supporter, had been threatening for months to jump ship because he thought the project had become overly dependent on a new partnership with Russia.

As the ranking Republican on the House space subcommittee, Sensenbrenner presumably would have urged other GOP supporters to defect in a close House floor vote expected Tuesday.

But at a Thursday news conference, he declared he is now satisfied that NASA can build and operate its orbiting outpost with or without Russia's help.

''We've now got this back as an American space station where we call the shots,'' Sensenbrenner said.

It was unclear exactly what substantive changes Sensenbrenner's previous sword-rattling brought, outside of focusing attention on the issue and producing a personal letter from the president.

Clinton's letter assured Sensenbrenner that ''the United States will maintain in-line autonomous U.S. flight and life support capability during all phases of station assembly.'' The station is to be assembled in orbit between 1997 and 2002.

Since it was proposed in 1984, the station has been a joint venture of U.S., European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies. In December Russia signed up for a major role, agreeing to provide service and electrical power modules, emergency crew escape vehicles and a ''space tug'' propulsion system.

The station must be moved to a steeper orbit to accommodate the Russians. And rockets owned by the former Soviet space agency are being counted on for 13 assembly flights, 15 crew transport flights and 29 ''reboost'' flights to keep the station aloft.

The U.S. and Russia signed more papers Thursday further cementing their new space partnership.

Sensenbrenner took partial credit for pressuring NASA to have contractors purchase, rather than simply lease, the Russian-built ''space tug.'' He also suggested that his criticism helped force changes in the station's ''launch sequence'' to give the U.S. more autonomy.

NASA spokesman Mark Hess said Thursday no changes have been made in the station's launch or assembly sequence as a result of Sensenbrenner's concerns. He said the space agency has been working for months on fall-back plans should U.S.-Russian relations go sour.